I need to work on new prints to be ready for the Youngstown Comic-Con (I’ll only have a table there on the Sunday the 8th), so ScrollBoss will be KINDA quiet until after the convention. Conveniently, this site’s 18th anniversary will hit a little over a week after that. There will probably be small updates here and there, especially when I get pixel art or game-related prints done.

Until next time, here are a few previews:

The long-awaited Raging Justice is out now! I bought it for PC/Steam and had fun playing it. There are tons of nice little combat touches, including knocking characters into the background, enemy arrests (with bonus points for catching foes who have warrants out for them). No, it’s not a stat-building, free-roaming game like a lot of other modern Walk ‘n Brawls, but I know a lot of other people who prefer arcade-length games; the can be played through with a visiting friend and short enough for a non-marathon stream. Check this out if that sounds like your kind of party!

Time for a mini-update! New Kunio-kun/River City Ransom style sprites of Mary Jane Watson, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong have been added to the custom sprite gallery and the image generator. Shout-out to artist the Dopest Robot for the idea! I also added one of the most important shopkeepers of all time: Fred G. Sanford, owner of the Sanford and Son Salvage empire.

I planned to have a small update this week, but I’ve got some line art to make for someone. Still, I figured this would be the perfect day to show a preview from the next Vs. Horror print. No surprises here…

The sprites in this print will have a slightly different shading style and won’t stick so closely to the 16-color limit of older sprites. Don’t expect to see those exact sprites added to the sprite galleries or generators, at least not for a long time after the print debuts.

Do expect to see an update with things being added to the galleries and image generators next week, though. Hold tight until then!

The only April Fool’s trick involving the site happened to me yesterday when I thought I’d spend the whole time making 8-bit style sprites. HA! You’ll read about that in a bit.

GFX Generators – The oft-neglected Fake Screenshot generator (with 8-bit graphics) gets some love today. I spent much of yesterday untangling a bug in the engine that messed up font selections on a few screens (esp. the Mega Man boss intros). I also added sprites to:

Sorry, but I’m a bit low on time here. I’ll be back later to add them to the sprite galleries (and possibly throw in a new sprite). The new River City Ransom NES sprites are now in the gallery. The others aren’t because… I don’t know what style they are, really. They were supposed to be like Mega Man doctors (Wily and Light), but don’t. I’ll figure it out later.

Be sure to check out the news in last week’s update post if you haven’t been here for a while, as it includes new fighting-scale sprites and a preview of an upcoming pixel art print!

GFX Generators:
– Dan Hibiki: thanks to a site visitor who wanted Dan’s CvS sprites and told me that Kong’s rips fit the same size as other sprites, Dan has CvS sprites now!
– the Marvel Legends box now has the Spider-Man box style. It’s easy to get pics of the outside of the box, but I have to get and scan my own box inserts, and getting classic Beetle (yes, I know who the Beetle is) let me do that. I still need to get a classic Taskmaster Marvel Legend to do the new Avengers box, though.

Work on the sequel to the “Horror vs.” print (with Freddy vs. Jason) is on the way and here’s a preview:

Even if you saw the preview I posted on Twitter and Instagram a few days ago, this one has a few changes, including some changed characters. I’m still not 100% sure about the “roster,” but I’ll talk more about that at a later date.

I’ll be at the Youngstown Comic Con at the Covelli Center this year, but only on Sunday, July 8th (I’m still working part of the weekend at my day job). It’s mostly a comic convention, but you’ll be sure to find video games and game-related stuff there, too. I finally got Gauntlet IV for Genesis at last year’s con. I’ll have both line art and pixel art prints, along with sketch cards and mini-prints that I don’t have on the site yet. If you can make it to NE Ohio on July 7th and or 8th, please check out the Youngstown Comic Con!

Celebrating the release of the live-action Black Panther movie with an update featuring T’Challa, his friends, and his foes I know, some have been both friend and foe, but this isn’t the time for that argument, I’ve got an update here.

Custom Sprites: the Black Panther, the Dora Milaje, Klaw, and Nightshade were added to the Marvel gallery. T’Challa, the Dora Milaje and Nightshade have multiple sprites, so be sure to check out their mini-galleries!

The new stuff has been added to the GFX Generators, where you can make your own graphics!

Last, but not least, this is the short (and kinda rushed) version of an idea I’ve had for almost two decades now. One of the sprite sets I wanted to make for M.U.G.E.N. was the Black Panther and I even had an idea for a fancy intro storyboard for it. I never got around to making a whole sprite set, but the intro (and the perfect theme song to use for it) has been stuck in my head ever since. Again, this was rushed (outside issues ate up a lot of time I’d rather spend working on this), but consider this a down payment on the full version I want to make some day.

First of all, just in case you didn’t come in through the front door, check out the new and improved index page. That new index pic is YEARS in the making, because I wanted the new version to have 0% sprite edits. That’s all scratch-made, including a sprite done for the new group shot and can’t be found in the galleries yet. I’ll let you find him for yourself. That external link icon set is new, too. Like a lot of the things in this update, it’s long overdue, so let’s get to the rest of it.

Sprites: lots of behind-the-scenes work was done on nearly all the galleries, mostly switching to the new image display format. There are a few new things, though.
– Golden Axe: the Duel: all arcade big portraits are now there (and separate) and an new .GIF of the final boss.
– P.O.W.: new gallery with sprites of the player characters.

I hope you enjoyed this year’s offerings for the site, even if I didn’t get to finish some of the things I teased for it. There were a lot of sprites…

… and not all of them are even in that pic. I’ve added two more in this update.

Storm was in the X-Men print, but not on the site (until now) and the Chainsaw Boss from Crime Fighters was done during the DangerTerrorHorrorThon, but I didn’t really feel like he completely fit the theme for some reason.

edit: As much as I want this year over as soon as possible, I’ve got to add some stuff here.

The Steam Winter Sale is still going strong and I want to recommend some of my personal favorites:River City Ransom: Underground (a worthy successor to the original), Fire Pro Wrestling World (the legendary series finally hits PCs with more customization than ever), Combat Core (in Early Access, a fun arena brawler for those to still miss Power Stone), Mercenary Kings (easily one of my favorite recent run ‘n gun games), and Owlboy (a pixel art masterpiece 10 years in the making, and it shows).

Most of 2017 was crappy for me, but some of the few good things I was able to experience this happened because of this site. Those pixel art commissions made up for the loss in day job hours and, fortunately, everyone I worked with was incredibly cool and paid me to sprite things I enjoyed making. The biggest event was being asked by Cuddly Rigor Mortis to make a print for the Gallery1988 Mattel show, and the limited edition print sold out! I finished a lot of my own personal wish-list sprites (the Capcom Aliens vs. Predator crew, completing the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters, the Last Dragon, Konami X-Men, Dr. West from Re-Animator, too many others to list). Lots of behind-the-scenes work was done on the site, and I’ve got another chunk almost done that will change and add a lot of sections in 2018. I want to thank you for the feedback and extra encouragement I got throughout the year, because it helped me get through the rough spots. See you in 2018!

All these new sprites have been added to the main graphic generator, along with the new G.I. JOE 128×192 pixel layout used to display some of the new G.I.JOE sprites up there. It replaces the cruddy, shorter version I did a long time ago. I’ll be adding more versions of that card in the near future.